Free Speech & the Constitution

You would think that of all the rights for which people were fighting during the '50s, '60s, and '70s, the ones explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution would not be among them. Yes, we now interpret the wording of the Constitution in such a way as to render rights fought for by the Feminist and Civil Rights Movements “explicit” also, but you can almost understand why there was, at one point, debate on whether “man” meant all humans or merely white males, given the context in which our Constitution was written. However, I cannot understand how “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble ….” could ever be interpreted in any way other than the freedom to speak, write, and peacefully congregate. The fact that there is a section in our anthology on the Free Speech Movement indicates that this impossibility of misinterpretation (or blatant disregard) was, in fact, possible. Of course, before even reading this section, more recent events in our history have already shown that the most basic and fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution can be reinterpreted and simply ignored at will by the administration.

In fact, I found it interesting that Richard Kampf’s lyrics in “Hey Mr. Newsman” include the lines, “Don’t know if I’m subversive, just want to say what I please / Strange how us subversives / Keep fighting for democracy.” This sounds sadly familiar—shortly after 9/11, a report was issued on how to identify possible subversives (McCarthyism, anyone?). Among other things, the list of traits to look out for included: if they homeschool their children (I was homeschooled!); if they own guns (isn’t that a Constitutional right, also?); if they have a larder stocked with more than a month’s worth of food (so Costco must be subversive, too); or if they are overly familiar with the Constitution. So knowing too much about your own government is suddenly a sign that you are a suspect, a terrorist, a subversive. This country has not come far since Kampf’s era.

Lee Felsenstein’s “Put My Name Down” touches on the same topic in the lyrics, “What do we want, why the mess? / The Constitution, nothing less!” How outrageous that U.S. citizens have to fight and go through all the hardships described in these pages simply to perform actions that are already guaranteed them in our own Constitution: speaking freely and gathering peacefully. In “Battle of Berkeley Talking Blues,” Dave Mandel adds a positive spin in places, while still commenting on the same dilemma, as when he states, “Free speech is coming cause some spoke out … / To get our rights we’ll have to shout…” Another line in the same song conjures up the long history of such protest in our country: “Civil Disobedience … an essay come alive … education in action.” With these lyrics, the hundred-year-old writings of Thoreau become relevant and immediate—as they did for Martin Luther King Jr. and the rest of the Civil Rights Movement in the south.

In Felsenstein’s Introduction to the song booklet, he urges its readers to “Sing them loud and sing them often. You will be helping to fight the battle for Constitutional rights.” I simply love the idea of songs being a real part of the battle, and it does have a certain ironic logic to it: if speech itself is under contention, what better way to fight back than to sing out loud about it?